A. Your pleas may sound pathetic to a lot of people, but I wish more 24-year-old young adults had such an interest in their credit. And your grandmother is not the norm for older folks, who usually have their credit in pretty good shape.

There are three major credit bureaus serving this area, and the wrong information you make note of may be in one or all of them.

We need to know what bureau or bureaus has the wrong data and we can contact them on your behalf.

Amazingly, as frustrating as these kinds of cases are, when we get the credit bureaus to straighten out who is who, it gets fixed.

I commend you on your diligence as a smart and credit-savvy consumer.

Q. I am thinking of having several chairs re-upholstered and saw an ad in the newspaper, but I know nothing about the company. Do you have a file on them, and if so, does it contain anything derogatory?

And, of course, I should like to know whether they are a member of the bureau.

A. A bunch of "no's" to all your questions no file, nothing bad and not a BBB member. When we get that report I always tell consumers there is "good news" (we have no complaints, and "no news") meaning we do not know anything.

I am putting this letter in this week as another reminder that I am probably the slowest source readers will have to get information on a company.

Call us 24 hours at 713-868-9500, or go on our website at www.bbbhou.org for a quick check on our reports.

Q. Help. In August I signed on with an Internet provider. The numbers I selected were often busy and would roll over to a number that was a long distance call for me.

From August to September, a total of $1,428.58 was incurred. I immediately contacted Southwestern Bell regarding this. They stated the Internet provider rents the numbers from them and this frequently happens to their customers but unfortunately there was nothing they could do.

A. We have heard this complaint before, although your bill sure is one for our record books. The Internet provider is based in Washington, D.C., and we are sending this to that BBB for resolution.

Q. I recently sent a copy of a complaint letter to your Houston BBB. They in turn sent it to the Dallas BBB. I just received a note from the Dallas BBB indicating that I need to remit a $9.95 fee to them before they investigate the complaint.

A. It may or may not have been a valid service guesstimate. We have one other unresolved complaint on them and will send this one along. If you are going to be "driving to drink" by a complaint you should at least have ice to chill things down.